2194 Days
by rosindustandsheetmusic
Summary: Archivist's Note: a compilation of testimonies, interviews, journals, recovered documents, etc., with a touch of creative license to present the information compiled in narrative form, this is a rough representation of what transpired from 1939 to 1945, from the perspectives of several nations involved. Dates are listed at the beginning of each chapter in European form.
1. 09 - 02 - 39

_"Lithy!" Feliks grabbed for the phone nearly before the first ring was finished. _

_"Hi Feliks," Toris said tiredly. He sounded like that more and more these days. Feliks wondered if he was getting enough sleep. He couldn't have been, if he always sounded so sluggish. It might have been the fact that Germany had just finished basically bullying him into handing over some territory earlier that month, but Feliks chose to believe it was Russia's fault, one way or another. Things were usually his fault, weren't they? "How are you?"_

_"Fine, fine- hey, guess what? You know how you and I were in Warsaw, and I was telling you about those really good candies that they sell in- you remember right? Anyway, I was thinking about it yesterday and I decided-"_

_"Feliks," Toris interrupted gently. "Don't you have bigger things to worry about?"_

_"What-" Feliks started, before remembering. "Oh, you mean Germany. Come on! With Britain and France on my side, he isn't going to get near me!" Feliks said, gesturing to what he thought was the west. He couldn't be totally sure... had he turned around recently or not?_

_There was silence on the other line. Evidently, the Lithuanian wasn't convinced. Feliks sighed long-sufferingly, twirling the cord of the phone around his finger. "Look, Lithy, I love you and all, but you could try and be a little less of a downer."_

_"I'm not allowed to be worried?"_

_"But there's nothing to be worried about!"_

_"Germany withdrew from the non-aggression pact he had with you," he pointed out. _

_That was... a little more difficult to brush off. Feliks had been trying hard to ignore the looming shadow Germany was casting on his political scene right now (super rude, if you asked Feliks. Like, he couldn't stay in his own country?), and Toris was making that rather difficult. "Gosh Toris, my army is just as big as his, and we're ready. Can we talk about something else now?"_

_"Just be safe,"_ _Toris said quietly. He could imagine the brunet's brow furrowed in worry. _

_Feliks waved a dismissive hand. "I'll be okay, just watch me."_

"Mother of God, this is not okay!" Feliks hit the ground hard, folding his arms over his head and curling up into a ball to make himself smaller, heart racing in his chest. Overhead, German planes screamed, bullets hitting the upper floors of buildings, shattering glass and pouring bits of plaster and wall down into the street. What were German planes doing in Warsaw?

As soon as the roar lessened into a dull rumble, Feliks got up and scrambled for cover in a move of pure instinct, rational thought taking a back seat as his brain shifted into self-preservation mode. Everyone else had the same idea, and Feliks found himself huddling under a partially collapsed storefront with about ten other people, all pushing to get as far under the ruined awning as they could, and if that meant mashing the strangers behind them like sardines in a tin, then so be it.

The fighters made another run, strafing the streets with bullets. Judging from the screams, and the tiny pinpricks of pain that danced across Feliks' skin, not all of them missed. This was nothing but target practice. The Germans flew completely unopposed in the sky, doing lazy turns back over the Polish capital. Feliks shut his eyes tightly, feeling sick.

"For the love of God, where are our planes!?" someone cried. Feliks was thinking the same thing, only he knew exactly where his planes were. They were getting shot out of the sky further west by the faster, newer German planes with their more experienced, better trained pilots.

They might have had similar headcounts, but but it was quickly becoming apparent that one of their military forces outfighting the other, and the odds weren't looking to favor Feliks. With its outdated, tiny Air Force, it was all the Polish Army could do to keep Stukas from massacring their own troops, which meant very little was left for domestic defense behind the front.

And that meant that German aircraft were able to fly more or less uninhibited through most of Poland, easy as if it were their own airspace. That included several bombing runs on Warsaw. This was only the second; the first had been very small, a couple light explosives at the city limits when the German army crossed the border yesterday. And because it was the second, everyone was unprepared. Feliks tried to check his watch but couldn't maneuver his arm to do it because of the person (or three) crowding him.

A thrill of fear ran through him, and Feliks pushed himself away. He hated the suffocating, chaotic feeling that so many people packed into too small a space gave him. A sort of human-induced claustrophobia. He was in the open again when the planes zoomed overhead, but the pilots must have had bigger fish to fry. They passed over Feliks with nothing more than a deafening roar as he stood, frozen, watching in a mixture of horror and silent awe. He'd forgotten how big planes could be.

As the German Stukas with their accompaniment of Messerschmitts droned off away from Warsaw, more daring souls began to filter out onto the street, away from cover, to inspect the damage done to their city. When they weren't ventilated by German gunners, more people deemed it safe to emerge from every nook and cranny Warsaw had.

Feliks thought he saw someone crawl out from under a manhole cover, but by the time he looked again, it was abandoned and he couldn't be sure he hadn't imagined it.

The street slowly took on life again, people milling about, wondering what on earth had happened, or why. The answers to both of those questions were self-evident, but shock prevented rational thought, and the implications of those causes were easier not to think about. _German planes in Warsaw... _Feliks wrapped his arms around himself, feeling cold even though the sun shone brightly.

Undulating gently like a wave, the people in the streets clustered near to each other, searching for answers, for family members, for solace, the dull murmur of a hundred voices punctuated by cries of pain or sorrow every minute or so. The sails of fire engines joined the discordant symphony. When spaces opened between moving forms, one could get a glimpse of the still bodies lying lonely down the road, haloed in crimson, before someone inevitably blocked the view, trying to weave their way to some important destination.

Bits of conversation spliced together by people moving in and out of earshot combined to write otherworldly dialogues: "Monica!" "Where is-" "Nikola, please," "Sir, wait!" "Are you-" "This giant Messerschmitt, right?" "I can't feel-" "-anything, Tymon, anything?"

Feliks slipped his way through the people darting this way and that, feeling very small, very alone, and choked. He could feel his pulse, though lowered now that the planes were gone, starting to quicken in his chest. Someone clipped into him while he happened to be off balance, and the next thing Feliks knew, he'd hit concrete. His lower arms stung, and Feliks knew immediately he'd scraped them. "Gosh fricking-" he began to say to himself.

"Bombers!" A young woman screamed, as if people couldn't already hear the deadly growl of the planes.

Everything froze.

And then started again, but more frantic, electric terror sparking in the tiny spaces that bubbled when people weren't smashed together as a single, sporadic mass. All Feliks could see were feet, running past him, around him, as if he were some stone in a creek, lying helpless as water rushed past. But as the tide rose, water covered rocks, indifferently washing over them. He felt something hard kick his shin, before something heavier went sprawling across his lower legs. Terrified at the suddenly very real prospect of being crushed, Feliks curled into a ball on his side, covering his head.

_It's gonna be fine, it's gonna be fine, _he repeated to himself. It was difficult to put coherent thoughts together. All Feliks could think of was the cartoonish image of himself smeared across the pavement, with his vest over here, a shoe over there and all this horrible red everywhere...

The conscious realization of that idea did it for Feliks. He pushed himself up and shouldered through people until he got to the edge of the crowd, practically rocketing out of it, like a rivet from a boiler under too much pressure. Arms cartwheeling as he tried to regain his balance, Feliks stumbled into an alleyway that was dark, thin, and mercifully devoid of other people.

He felt himself shaking, fighting to breathe steadily, not sure if it was because he was scared, or because of the crowd, or because what was going on further West was beginning to affect him physically. Feliks clamped his hands over his ears as more planes swept low over his section of the city, trying to keep out their noise and the clamor in his head.

A Stuka flew over the buildings, so near to Feliks he could practically see where the landing gear was folded into the plane. He also saw the bomb bay doors open, but couldn't force himself to move until the strip of sky between the two buildings framing the alley was tinted orange and red and black from the explosion. Feliks bolted with a rush of adrenaline, dodging falling debris, some of the chunks bigger than he was. As he was about to get clear of the alley, a falling piece of brick caught Feliks on the left shoulder, sending him tumbling into the ground.

His shoulder exploded in white-hot pain as it connected with the dirt, and a cry of pain tore itself from his lips. If something wasn't broken, Feliks would be surprised. His face and lower arms were stinging too. Bringing the hand attached to his uninjured arm to his cheek, he found it to be damp with sweat and blood, and smeared with dark grime from the smoke from the fires burning throughout the city and dust. His arm and hand were covered with little cuts and bruises from the fall as well. Feliks scowled. Now his outfit was ruined too, and he _liked_ these pants.

Coughing from dust and pulverized stone, Feliks staggered out of the alley's entrance and tried to remember where he was. There was no one to be seen anywhere. Warsaw had gone from bustling metropolitan capital to ghost town in minutes. All it took were a few planes.

Someone bolted past Feliks, cradling a small red bundle in their arms. Feliks told himself it wasn't an injured kid. This was really happening, wasn't it? They'd just finished fighting and now he'd been thrown into the ring again.

He tried to run, but it hurt too much to let his injured arm hang free and too awkward to hold it still with his other arm, so Feliks walked in the direction of the state buildings. Or, what he thought was the right direction. He couldn't be totally sure. Chaos had a way of altering a familiar landscape even if nothing gets moved around. It was enough just for you to be scared, and then everything familiar seems out of place, everything unfamiliar is a threat, and nothing can be trusted.

Well, if Feliks was going in the wrong direction, he'd find out sooner or later. Sidestepping a car wreck that must have happened when the first few bombers appeared, Feliks continued on his chosen path.

Two Messerschmitts appeared in the sky, their drone giving them away long before they were seen. No one else could be seen, so there was a good chance they'd leave this street alone. Messerschmitts didn't carry bombs, just bullets. If they were intent on hitting people, they'd find none here. Feliks crouched under the canopy of a storefront, peeking out to watch as the planes flew low to the roofs. Just a few meters lower, and one of the fighters might have clipped a wing on one of the buildings and crashed. _If only,_ Feliks thought. One less plane for his soldiers to worry about.

The two planes' machine gun turrets popped and clattered, sending bullets hurtling into the street. The city bus parked in front of a hotel half a block away took many of them head-on. _If the air force can't do anything for Warsaw, the city can defend itself,_ Feliks thought, a smile that bordered on smug plastered on his face. _Stupid Germans are gonna find resistance wherever they try to go in my country. _

But the bus, that accidental civil defender, was killed in action by a wound to the heart- that is to say, a bullet got lucky in the engine.

A wave of heat blasted him in the face, and sent Feliks flying backwards into the wall of the store, ears ringing. The initial explosion burned brighter than the sun, and it was a few moments before Feliks was able to blink away the glare. When he opened his eyes, the bus was on fire, top smashed in as if someone had stepped on it. He stared at it in horror, praying that there hadn't been anyone inside. Or underneath of it, using what cover there was.

As the blast faded from his eardrums, Feliks found that the fire engines had gone silent. He waited a moment and he still couldn't hear anything. He snapped by one of his ears. Nothing.

"Well, great, then." He felt himself saying the words, but didn't hear them. How long would that take to heal? Not long, he hoped. He had to make a call after this. Toris would probably be losing his mind with worry, and if Feliks didn't assure him we was fine, that everything was going to be alright, he thought the Lithuanian might actually do something rash. It would be the first time, but Feliks didn't mind flattering himself with such a thought. It was nearly therapeutic, in a time like this.

But he needed to call, just to say he was okay. Never mind whether or not Toris believed him. Feliks just wanted to hear himself say it. That everything would work out, that France would come and help, and Britain would too, and together they'd all push Germany back into Germany and fix everything and things would go back to normal.

Feliks looked down the street, taking advantage of the moment of silence to catch his breath. Half of it was utter rubble, and what buildings weren't razed to the ground were burning. The smell of what Feliks knew but didn't want to recognize as burning corpses started to waft over the sidewalks. Almost glad for his inability to hear, Feliks started in the opposite direction, towards the Governor's Palace. He wondered how long it would be before he and Toris would be shopping for candy in Warsaw again.

_Not long. _Feliks told himself. _Not long at all. _

Leaving the charred remains of the bus behind him, Feliks continued his journey towards the capitol building. He passed the Hotel Anjielski, sections of it on fire and people milling around the edges of it like ants whose anthill had been crushed; listless and panicked, they swarmed the periphery of the building, far enough to stay clear of the flames, but clearly not wanting to leave. A fire engine was parked next to it, though Feliks couldn't see if it was doing much good.

He continued on, taking a detour around the Potockiego Palace, which was miraculously still standing, seemingly unscathed. Alone it its hill, it seemed to survey the damage done to its surroundings with a certain sadness fitting for the old building.

And the damage done was far from superficial. Feliks couldn't get through Traugutta because a building had toppled over, blocking it completely. With only one arm in proper order, Feliks wasn't sure he wanted to take his chances climbing over. So he doubled back on what he was pretty sure was Wiertzhowa Street until he came to a neighborhood that seemed to have gotten hit hard by the bombers.

A small form jutted out from the ruins of a house on Trebacka street that had obviously taken a direct hit. So ruined was it that the child (who couldn't have been more than eight) stood head and shoulders over any standing structures. Spurred on by a mix of morbid curiosity and a sudden and unusual sense of filial duty, despite not knowing the girl, Feliks jogged over to her. It was a bad idea, and he came down choking on smoke.

The little girl was clutching nothing but herself, folding her arms close to her chest and looking blankly into nowhere. Flames licked at broken beams of wood near her feet, which didn't have shoes. She turned to face Feliks with a quiet defeat that was heartbreaking to see on such a young girl's face. Nearby, a section of wall collapsed in a shower of sparks, succumbing to the flames.

"What's your name?" Feliks asked in a voice that would have been too loud in any other social setting, but with pandemonium wreaking havoc around them, he had to in order for the girl to hear him and for Feliks to hear himself. His hearing was getting better, but everything still was being processed as though through an auditory fog.

"Aldona," she said soberly, brown eyes searching Feliks' green ones for something. An answer, perhaps. An answer for why someone had smashed her home to pieces, hurt her family, left her alone.

"Oh, that's pretty! I'm Feliks. Where is your family?" Instead of answering, Aldona looked solemnly towards the sky. Feliks followed her gaze to see Stukas streak through the air, Messerschmidts tailing them. Feliks' immediate reaction was to run, but in the middle wrecked house, there was no cover, only broken, crushed, and bent remnants of what had once been a home, and maybe people. For now, no bombs rained down. He hadn't heard the roar of the engines.

"Are they leaving?" Aldona asked in what sounded like a whisper to Feliks. He wasn't sure he had actually heard her. The two watched silently, kneeling in the wreckage of the house as the plane formation headed east, raining hellfire over the Old Town. Feliks straightened, taking the little girl's hand in his own.

They had to get somewhere safe. Rather, he needed to get Aldona somewhere safe, and Feliks needed to book it back to the Governor's Palace and pray it wasn't destroyed. He didn't know where the rest of the Ministers were, but he seemed physically alright except for his burning shoulder and healing cuts from falling earlier, so he was optimistic about the safety of his legislative and executive bodies. But the Prime Minister's residence was where Feliks wanted to be. There, they could figure out something to do, they could get France and England's help, and they could get Feliks a phone. If he could only do one of those things, Feliks would take the last one, no questions asked.

He looked around, trying to gauge where he could leave a small child on her own with relative ease of conscience that she would be safe. St. Andrew's was across the street, but its heavy doors were closed. There wasn't any getting in. In any case, Feliks wouldn't have left her completely alone. Across the street was a Jewish synagogue. It was discrete and small, but stood in its own little courtyard away from other buildings. It was unharmed, just like the Catholic church near it. It was perfect.

"I'm gonna see if these guys can take care of you, alright? Don't worry about anything, because I'm sure they're totally chill people." He said to Aldona, his voice to him was only a whisper and heard more in his head than through his ears.

Aldona's hand curled tighter in his, but she said nothing.

Feliks rapped on the door. Further off, a formation of planes approached Warsaw. Seeing them, anyone outside began to scatter from open space like animals before a storm. Feliks could only pray that they were headed to another section of the city.

A dark haired wisp of a man opened the door, revealing clusters of people already inside, some talking, some sitting, all nervous in a manner that came off in waves. Part of Feliks didn't want to leave Aldona in there, didn't trust the way that nobody seemed to be in charge, or knew what was going on. He wanted to take her with him, keep an eye on her. But the place he was going wouldn't help her. He couldn't even be sure that they'd let her in, never mind whether she was with Feliks or not. She was a little girl, and the government didn't have time for one little girl. Not with a war to worry about.

"Can you take her?" Feliks shouted over the crescendoing roar of the planes. Messerschmitts, he guessed. The Stukas were louder. "Her family is gone." He hoped wildly that the man would say she could stay. Aldona needed to get somewhere inside; somewhere safe, a church, a hospital. Places planes weren't allowed to bomb.

The man nodded slowly, said something Feliks couldn't make out. When he didn't get an answer, the man held out a hand to Aldona, who glanced from his face to Feliks'. She hesitated. Feliks nudged her forward. "Go on, _myszko_," he said gently, though he couldn't hear it. Aldona really did remind him of a mouse. Small and timid and brown, but completely capable and smart. Forgetting his left arm was useless, he started to wave her onwards with it, and just barely bit back a yelp of pain.

Aldona stepped inside without even a wave, and the doors to the synagogue shut with a quiet thud. Suddenly, Feliks wanted to run back inside and take Aldona back. He had had a real goal for just a little bit, someone to walk with, to keep him alert. Now he was alone again, and that was worst of all. Warsaw was a ghost town, and Feliks felt himself the only specter in it.

With difficulty, he told himself that she couldn't leave, it was dangerous and he was being selfish, and turned away from the synagogue. Not a little bit disheartened, Feliks was on his way again. He couldn't have been more than a few streets away from where he started, though the difference in the landscape kept throwing him off. If he was near the Przeymsłu and Rolnictwa museum, then the Governor's palace should have been... Feliks turned in a slow circle. That way. Krakowskie Przedmieście went straight south towards the Prime Minister's residence. Feliks grinned, proud of himself for having figured it out. He began walking, not unconscious of the fact that every step took him further from the strange, somber little girl.

The few people there were in the street broke into runs, and Feliks looked up to see what had made them so scared. He couldn't hear much of anything, but he hadn't thought he'd miss approaching planes.

One of the aircraft from earlier had broken away from its formation and was headed towards the buildings near Feliks. He realized the model too late. It wasn't a Messerschmitt at all, but a Stuka dive bomber. By the time that clicked, by the time Feliks started sprinting towards the synagogue again, the bomb had fallen.

He'd forgotten. He'd forgotten Kristallnacht, he'd forgotten about the border fiasco back in October, he _forgotten_ exactly what sort of Anti-Semitism was running rampant in Germany. Maybe not through the streets and the general populace, but it ran in political circles, and it ran through the office of the Chancellor, and that was more than enough.

Feliks staggered backwards from the blast until he lost his balance, falling onto asphalt, unable to take his eyes off of the burning, crumpled synagogue. He couldn't feel his legs, and hot tears burred his vision. He blinked them away, and the image of the flames burned under his eyelids, seared into his retina.

_Ditz_.

The tears spilled over, running down Feliks' cheeks and onto the ground. His arms felt too heavy to move to wipe them away. They stung the closing cuts on his face, and a growing part of Feliks felt like he deserved it. He deserved it for not thinking, for being so flippant about everything, for being an

_Idiot._

Blood rushed in his ears, his right side hurt, like he had gotten a cramp, or broken a rib. Between that and his shoulder rendering his left arm immobile, Feliks was well on his way to being a right mess. Why had he thought the synagogue would be safe? The Geneva Convention could try all it wanted; there are no rules of war.

_Naïve._

Feliks gasped, shattered breaths trying and failing to get enough air into his lungs. He couldn't breathe. He shut his eyes tightly, focusing on his pulse pounding in his ears, not on the solemn, trusting face of Aldona flickering in the darkness behind his eyelids-

"Stop," he pleaded with his mind, words coming out strangled and wet with tears. "Stop." The wind carried his plea away. He felt himself falling, spiraling into a horrible feeling of helplessness and despair, which only wound tighter and tighter into infinity. It was familiar, and despite the fact that it was an awful sensation, it was something he knew. He could feel himself falling into it...

Which woke Feliks up. He supposed he could lie here, in the street, until another fighter plane came down and decided to strafe it with bullets. That was one option. He would be dead, yes, but only for a while and then he'd still have to deal with the mess and the pain. Or, he supposed, he could get up, tell his emotions to stuff it for a few minutes, get to the Governor's Palace, and then process everything. Tears wouldn't fix anything.

Feliks rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, held it for ten seconds, then exhaled slowly. Then he opened them, and made the conscious decision to stand up.

One decision at a time, that was all it was.

Feliks decided he was going to follow the road for the next few blocks.

He staggered forward a few steps, before becoming dizzy and pausing to lean on the chassis of a wrecked car. Inhale, hold, exhale. Inhale, _one Mississippi two Mississippi three..._ exhale.

He decided he could keep going.


	2. 15 - 10 - 38

Arthur practically tore the doors to Neville Chamberlain's office off of their hinges in his rush to get inside. Still pulling on a blazer, he'd thrown his weight into them using his back. Evidently, they were made of a very light type of wood indeed. "God damn it all," he muttered, wincing and trying to gauge if anything was broken. The secretary leaned over his desk outside, curiosity overcoming professionalism, trying to see what had happened before the doors fell shut again.

Neville Chamberlain, standing at his window with a pile of papers in one hand and a pen in the other, raised an amused eyebrow at the personification. Arthur felt heat rising in his cheeks. He straightened his collar, clearing his throat. "I, ah. I was in a rush." He added a mumbled "Sorry," as an afterthought.

"Not at all. You're the first person who has brought anything mildly amusing this morning." Chamberlain smiled, before his expression turned more dour. "You and I are taking a little trip to Germany, so you can go upstairs and pack." He looked towards the ceiling, thinking. "No more than a few days, I suppose."

That, never mind not sounding good, was news that came out of nowhere. Chamberlain might as well have thrown something at Arthur. He would have staggered backwards all the same. "I'm sorry sir, but what?" Chamberlain turned around with a frown. He wasn't in the habit of repeating himself. "I mean, why so suddenly?" Arthur said quickly.

Chamberlain looked Arthur dead in the eye. "Adolf Hitler turns on a dime."

Arthur felt his heart skip a beat. That goddamned- He suddenly wanted to throw all the way to Berlin, to hit that insane bastard in the head. Maybe a ton of bricks. Maybe a bomb.

"Is this about Czechoslovakia?" He asked, though he already knew the answer. Of course it was about Czechoslovakia. Everything was about bloody Czechoslovakia now that the Austria issue was off the table. Though, for being the subjects of so much attention, hardly anyone ever saw Petra or Silas anymore. Heavy silence hung in the air.

"We can talk more about this in the car," Chamberlain said. He looked at his watch. "We leave at quarter past."

Arthur ran back upstairs to find his suitcase.

They didn't talk more in the car. They didn't, because Chamberlain was rather busy discussing the recent situation in Germany with some chap from the office of the ambassador to Germany. At the moment, it was something about the nation's growing military strength. Up in the passenger seat, it was difficult to catch much of the conversation from the back of the car, but judging by the tones of the Prime Minister and the Ambassador's assistant, it wasn't a light subject. Things must have been bad then.

So, with no one to talk to but the driver (who Arthur was positive he shouldn't talk to, given that though he was driving the PM, he probably didn't have the clearance to know anything useful) Arthur was left to silently wrestle with a growing sense of dread by himself, completely in the dark about whether it was a legitimate fear he held or not.

Germany was insane. Did he really want to risk having another war after just barely finishing such a disastrous one? And over what? It couldn't be more an a hundred kilometers of land. If he was bluffing, it was dangerously stupid, something that Ludwig wasn't in the habit of being. If not... If not they were all up the creek without a paddle. Czechoslovakia in particular, but if any of their allies decided to come to their aid, _their_ allies would be pulled into the fray as well, and then it would be the Great War all over again and Arthur would not have that.

In a remarkably selfish way, he didn't want to go back to the fighting, for the mental turmoil, the fear, and the physical pain it caused him as a personification, but if he wanted it for himself, he also wanted it for his people. It was bad enough that people thought the death counts were in the millions. It was worse that they couldn't be sure.

The two disembarked at an airstrip outside of London (one of many under renovation as part of an effort to keep up with the neighbors in military preparedness), said a short goodbye to the assistant and the driver, boarded the plane, and took off to the southeast.

Once they were in the air, over the stormy cover of clouds that seemed to have made most of England its permanent home, Arthur made another attempt at conversation. "Sir, what exactly is going on?"

"Hitler has agreed to a meeting at his mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden to talk out the Czechoslovakia issue in relative peace."

"The same demands as last time?"

Chamberlain nodded tiredly. "All areas of Czechoslovakia with more than 50% ethnic German population are to be returned to Germany with all haste. Military methods will not go unexamined," he intoned. By the end, Arthur had joined in. He'd heard the same thing lord knew how many times before. More than enough to be able to recite it in his sleep.

"Is anyone else-"

"Just us." Arthur cocked his head, confused. At the very least, Silas wasn't going to be involved? People were lying if they told themselves that the Czech part of Czechoslovakia was the smaller part or an even half of the leadership of the new nation, but neither of the siblings were coming? "It's just us," Chamberlain repeated, seeing that Arthur hadn't yet processed the information.

"So what are we going to do?"

Chamberlain frowned out the window. "What we are going to do is try not to get involved in another war."

Arthur thought about the other nations still managing to hold their own in the world stage. The _world powers,_ if you will. "Do we have some backup of things go poorly?" He paused, trying to come up with people he'd seen coupled with Czechoslovakia recently. "France?"

"Too scared to make a move, or Germany still views him as an enemy too much to agree to talk." Arthur frowned. As far as he knew, the personification of Germany wasn't calling the shots, or things would be a lot more sensible over there.

"And the Soviets?" Arthur asked. If he remembered correctly, Petra had made a trip to Russia recently to ask about an alliance. The relative success of that venture, however, Arthur wasn't privy to.

Chamberlain waved the suggestion away. "Do we really want to get involved with them when there are other choices?" He asked with obvious disdain.

Arthur shrugged. He certainly wasn't on friendly terms with Ivan by any stretch of the imagination. "Depending on what the other choices are," he said, though the response went unnoticed by the prime minister, who was engrossed in his papers.

His own folder sat expectantly in front of him, asking to be read. Arthur leaned back in his seat, watching clouds roll past. Reviewing what he already knew was the last thing he wanted to be doing. Besides, while the specifics might have changed, the general idea was that same; Arthur already knew exactly how this meeting would turn out. Chamberlain and he would go over there, he'd convince that German- Austrian? Did it matter?- crackpot not to do something rash (ie. taking parts of Czechoslovakia that didn't belong to him and triggering a war), and then they'd go home. Until the next month, because he'd have to go run damage control on a man who played with people like a toddler did with his toys. Gleefully, but indiscriminate in the damage caused.

_To be honest, though.._. Arthur thought sourly. _He's getting a hell of a lot of what he wants by throwing temper tantrums from a podium. _

A black car picked them up when they landed. The driver was German, but seemed to know perfectly well where Arthur and Chamberlain were headed. It didn't take long to arrive, but the journey was another largely silent one. It could have been the car, or it could have been nerves, but Arthur could have thrown up.

Adolf Hitler's retreat at Berchtesgaden was situated on a rocky precipice flanked by silvery stone waterfalls and dizzying drops on two sides. To the rear of the estate, trees clustered together claustrophobically, tiny trails disappearing into the foliage. And to the front, the dirt road that the car carrying Britain and the Prime Minister teetered up.

Upon getting out of the car, were ushered into a room on the second floor by a maid. She left them in a nicely-decorated room that was abjectly, pretty. The lightly painted walls gave way to smooth, cherry-colored wooden flooring, and large windows overlooking the mountain and a yard carpeted in pebbles instead of grass. However, Arthur had the urge to pin some sort of menacing, fortress-like aspect onto the house (despite the fact that it was just a retreat, not the Kremlin) just because he knew who owned it, and the pebbles worked. Not well, but they'd do the job.

_He won't even let grass live near him. _

Actually, now that the thought was in his head, Arthur conceded that it was a little immature. More than a little immature, and reached by rather flawed logic, considering that flowers and trees, especially with the fluffy clouds that dotted the sky, rendered the grounds an almost picturesque scene. Enough for a watercolor painting, at the very least, if one didn't mind being overwhelmed by the intense shade of deep but vibrant green that draped the surroundings like a shroud.

They didn't have to wait long before the door reopened. Into the room walked the German chancellor and the younger German personification. Prussia didn't make an appearance, but then again, the health of the older nation had become something of a touchy subject recently.

"_Guten Morgen _Herr Chamberlain. Herr Kirkland."

"Gentlemen," Chamberlain returned with a polite nod. Arthur did the same, not quite trusting himself to say anything just yet. As always, he needed a few minutes to reconcile this more charismatic version of Germany's leader with the screaming propagandist some of the British higher ups portrayed him as. Not that it wasn't hard to see, watching his speeches and the general mania that was Germany at that moment. "I trust you're doing well?"

There was a moment of awkward silence. Chamberlain obviously had expected a response, and was thrown a little off guard by the Chancellor's declination to answer it. "Let's not lose any time, shall we?" Hitler said suddenly. "Sit." The curt tone of the order clashed with the polite gesture to a table situated near the windows. When Arthur and Chamberlain sat at their places, the sunshine shone brightly and indifferently in their eyes.

Adolf Hitler sat with his back towards the view. Ludwig sat next to him, hands clasped nearly in front of him on the table, posture stiff and straight. His face betrayed no internal thoughts as Arthur squinted at it, but remained empty and serious and stern. He wondered how much that expression would change if he threw his pen at it.

While he might have endeavored to find out a few hundred years ago, Arthur was not that sort of man now. And in any case, the dame Diplomacy demanded better manners. Still, it was frustrating to try and work with someone whose positions (and disposition) were like those of a brick wall: solid, and liable to hurt you if you disturbed them too much.

On the other hand, the leader of the country was the one to be concerned with, and Arthur had been lead to believe that this particular leader was something to worry about. Where Ludwig was a brick wall, Hitler was much less stable. A haphazard pile of sharp knives and needles, held together with a little hot wax. No one had properly toppled the structure yet, but Arthur didn't want to be around when it inevitably happened.

For a while, they discussed normal things. Anglo-German relations, colonial enterprises (which Germany seemed to be getting unnervingly interested in under its current leadership), trade issues, and the like. Obviously, the Prime Minister's plan had been to get in, leave the Czechoslovakia question for later, and get out before it could come up. Probably an '_Oh, so sorry we forgot about it! Maybe next time?' _note would follow. Arthur had to question the relative wisdom of such a move, especially since nothing was really being _done_, just pushed the issue further into the future. But as of now, it wasn't _not _working_. _

"Now, about the Sudetenland," Hitler began. Arthur could almost hear Chamberlain's mental groan. He'd been hoping to avoid the matter completely, and Arthur too. Up until now, he'd managed fairly well. "I'm sure you're aware that the question of returning it to Germany remains unresolved."

"Yes," Chamberlain said slowly, spreading his hands across the table, as if searching for a way out of the discussion.

"The Treaty of Versailles was incredibly unfair to the German population. As you know..." Arthur thought about dropping his head on the table and starting to bang it. Again, not very gentlemanly, so he didn't, but the temptation was still there, and getting stronger by the minute. His younger self would had taken it immediately, maybe even gotten up and left. Because Chamberlain had gotten the orator on a tirade, and worse, on a subject he was passionate about, and it could be anywhere from fifteen minutes to three hours before he finished.

"Now you've done it," He whispered to Chamberlain.

The Prime Minister didn't look as irritated as Arthur felt. "I know, but as long as he's talking, I can think." Arthur threw up his hands before putting them back in his lap. Oh yes, Chamberlain would be able to think, but the rest of the individuals in the room would have to listen.

He stared out the window, watched it begin to rain. As time went on, it grew from a drizzle into a full shower. Arthur watched the torrents of water carve streams into the pebbled ground. Thunder was yet to be heard, but lightning flashed in clouds further off. He hoped the first clap wouldn't catch him by surprise. Thunder and artillery fire were far too similar of sounds. For Arthur, as well as far too many others, memories of the Great War had still yet to fade.

Distant rumbling from the clouds was heard as Hitler finally began to end his speech. "Czechoslovakia will order a complete mobilization, I've heard," he mused, as if it was an afterthought. He stopped pacing, but remained standing, forcing the Brits to turn awkwardly in their seats to face him.

"Let's not make Czechoslovakia a military matter," Chamberlain said warily.

"On the contrary, I am perfectly prepared to make it a military matter," Hitler said cooly, even had the audacity to smile a little as he said it. He knew what sort of game they were playing here. They all did. Britain was scrabbling for ground trying to hold Germany back from doing something they wanted to do. It was difficult to win a tug of war when both teams were vying for the ribbon in between them. It was much harder when one team was only trying to pull another back.

And what ammunition did they have? Nothing. Chamberlain was largely against military alliances, so if Britannia ruled the waves, Britannia did it alone. Czechoslovakia had alliances, but Russia refused to intervene if France didn't help, and France was perfectly ready to sit by if Britain didn't pull some weight too.

God _damn_ it, they'd reduced their military to nothing! Then this smug little arsehole had decided to come in, consolidate power, and remilitarize the entire bloody country, and _what_ was he doing about it? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Francis seemed equally keen on staying out of his neighbor's business. They'd sat by, and from the looks of things, Germany was now perfectly capable of trampling his own neighbors.

Well, if Britain was here to babysit, they'd make sure that their charge wouldn't set the house on fire. But Chamberlain looked like he was at a loss at how to reach to this particular threat, unsure whether to try and grab the lit match by force, or try and reason with the child holding it. "I'm sure we can work something out that wouldn't involve an unnecessary loss of life." Hitler only shrugged, making a note in the margin of one of his papers as he sat down again.

"I'm sure you have some suggestions?"

The stormy atmosphere hadn't migrated inside. Yet.

Arthur and Ludwig had yet to say anything, and he had to wonder how this meeting would have gone if it had been to two of them trying to smooth out their leaders' differences. Judging by the pained look that slipped through Ludwig's mask of perfect, blank attention once in a while, it would have gone much better, and taken much less time. Arthur discreetly checked his watch. They'd been here for four hours already.

"I have a few," Chamberlain said.

The only one he was able to convince the German chancellor on was a plebiscite in the Sudetenland. Enough votes his way, and Hitler got what he wanted. Arthur found himself thinking that there were more than enough ways to rig a vote, but they weren't looking for fairness. Fairness was hardly a word in politics, and less in global politics. You haggled for what you could, grabbed the best deal you could find, and got the hell out before someone tore you to pieces. Arthur had been in the thick of it for centuries longer than the current leaders of the world, and still he felt guilty. That had to say something alright about human nature, didn't it?

Chamberlain assured Hitler that Britain and France would accept the results of the plebiscite whatever the outcome.

_"But France won't necessarily agree," _Arthur took the chance to whisper as quietly as he could as Hitler and Ludwig were busy searching for some paper or another.

Chamberlain responded in like volume without looking at Arthur. "_We'll call them to London when we get back and ask them whether or not they fancy going to war again." _Arthur figured that was fair enough. If Francis didn't want to be here for the debating, he'd just have to accept the consensus the parties came to without him.

To Arthur's surprise, he agreed. In a sense. What Hitler said was that he wouldn't take military action "for the moment." No sort of time slot for them to work with, no real agreement to leave Czechoslovakia alone, but no declaration of war either. The knot in Arthur's stomach started to ease just a little bit. Petra was going to lose her shit when she heard about this, but if she wanted to refuse, that was her issue, not his. Arthur and Chamberlain had done their best. He didn't intend to interfere any more than he needed to. Something told him to stay very far away from Germany under its current leadership.

Hitler began to gather up his papers. Ludwig silently and mechanically did the same. Arthur was starting to worry about him. He hadn't said a word the entire time, just sat in his chair, looking empty, like someone had yet to give him instructions on how to react.

Hitler looked horrifically happy as he started down the stairs, before stopping in the middle of them and turning to look at the Brits. Ludwig had already disappeared. "It's a pity," he mused, not sounding at all like it was indeed a pity. "That the weather turned so poor. I would have liked to take you to see the view from the top of the mountain."

Arthur gave the chancellor a look like he had just offered to throw him off of a bridge. He made sure to do it as his back was turned, but Chamberlain gave him a stern stare all the same. Arthur gestured to the man, trying to get across to Chamberlain just what a bizarre turn of disposition this was. He hated these meetings, and the bipolar personality of the German chancellor was not the least of those reasons.

"There are umbrellas in the stand by the front door. You'll find the ride back down a little slippery, but my drivers know what they are doing."

That did nothing to make Arthur feel better.

He and his Prime Minister descended the stairs and, taking the umbrellas, stepped outside. Wind whipped at their coats, lashing their faces with fat raindrops. Arthur couldn't wait to get back home.

"You know," Chamberlain said, getting into the black car, angling the umbrella to shield the interior from the rain. "Given the unfortunate circumstances, I don't think we did half poorly."

The mountain scenery rolled past as the car slipped slowly down the road, smaller plants bending under the weight of the rain. Drops of water made an assault on the windshield.

_As long as we don't have to go back, _Arthur thought, trying to keep his mood lighter than the weather.


	3. 2X - 09 - 42

General Georgy Zhukov hung up on Ivan before he'd had the chance to say goodbye. Or, probably more importantly, agree to the orders the officer was giving him. But what put Ivan out was the first part.

He hung the phone back in its place and turned the radio, with its incessant buzz of production increases and patriotic resistance fighters, off. He watched the little dials go dim with a content smile. It had always made him smile, watching the lights go dark slowly. Like the music didn't quite want to leave.

It almost pained Ivan to turn the lights off, to have another room in the house go dark and lifeless, but he might not be back for some time.

Feliks gave Ivan a sullen glare from the first floor sitting room as he passed, letting the pages of his book fall closed. Ivan stared innocently at him. He was probably upset that he was being kept here longer that his three months. Germany and Russia had a tense agreement that involved each keeping Feliks for a quarter of the year, which had been working well enough, but due to recent events, they might not have had an agreement anymore. But why should they? Ivan had the bigger half of Poland, so why shouldn't he have had complete custody of the nation?

But without the appearance of another Polish personification, Ivan was forced to share. He didn't very much like sharing his things, especially when it made his house emptier and colder, but he guessed he wouldn't have to much longer. Germany was asking for it, and if things went well, the USSR would have all of Poland soon enough. But for now... Germany's turn was overdue. Ivan was supposed to have sent Feliks back to Berlin in August, but then Germany had made things... difficult. Ivan (not completely on his own) had decided that Poland would just have to stay until Stalingrad stopped getting shelled to bits.

Pity about the book, though. He'd have lost his place. _Well, it doesn't matter much, _Ivan figured. He knew Feliks hadn't been reading it anyway.

He also passed what might have been Ravis' shadow on the way towards the front door. It was hard to tell. The boy had always been flickery, making you look twice to make sure you had seen him, but recently, he seemed more ghost than physical person. Eduard was nowhere to be seen, which meant he was probably in his room upstairs, but Toris was in the entrance hall, cleaning, for lack of better things to do.

"I'm headed out," he said, pulling on his overcoat.

Toris looked surprised. "Where?" He asked, before his eyes widened a hand flew to his mouth, covering it too late. He'd already asked questions. Ivan didn't notice; he'd gotten one arm stuck in the sleeve of his coat.

"Stalingrad. The Germans need a little more motivation to leave than we initially thought." Ivan fiddled with his scarf, pulling it over his collar. He probably should have taken it off beforehand.

"I see," Toris said slowly. He sounded like he was going to say something else, and Ivan turned expectantly towards him, waiting to hear what it was. But the brunet kept his mouth closed, turning his eyes to the ground and gripping the feather duster in his hand tighter.

Evidently he hadn't wanted to say anything. Ivan turned the doorknob and started to leave before stopping abruptly. "Oh! Tell Ravis and Eduard that you three might be getting deployed soon," he said, remembering his recent conversation with General Zhukov. "I don't know where, but I figured you'd probably want some warning." Toris went pale as Ivan smiled in lieu of saying goodbye and shut the door.

Of the six boats that started across the Volga river with Ivan, only two made it into the city, one barely hovering over the waterline thanks to a German shell.

Stalingrad looked like hell. Technically, Ivan was not supposed to go comparing things to hell because of the term's religious nature, but old habits died hard. And it really did look otherworldly.

A dark fog draped the city like an ugly blanket, and when Ivan got closer and started choking, he realized it was smoke. That explained why the city was lit not by electricity anymore, but by a thousand burning fires, making buildings far away look like shattered glass; sharp and irregular and blackened by ash. It was an infinite reflection; endless distortions of the same fires and destruction and bodies.

Carpet bombing had turned most of the city to rubble, and any buildings still (mostly) standing stuck out like skeleton hands rising from a mass grave. The river Volga burned further downstream, oil and petrol slicking the surface and eating at wooden piers.

And yet, the army went on, business as usual. The base Ivan arrived at wasn't outside, but hidden in the shell of a plow factory, machines now still and silent, but everything else bustling and lively. Trucks idled outside, and campfires- the only flames controlled in the city, perhaps- crackled brightly, providing what warmth they could to the miserable souls huddled around them.

Ivan was received by the commanding officer, and given directions to the old floor manager's office, upstairs with windows overlooking the plant. He was also given a very brief description of who he could expect to find in that room: a citizen, a veteran, and a private.

Anya Urbanova held her head high as Ivan entered. The only woman in the room, she carried herself with elegance unusual for a woman of her stature. A citizen and a woman, Ivan would have loved to hear the story of how she managed to get into a Red Army unit. Perhaps it was her attitude that made her appealing to the military. Anyone who encroached too far upon her personal space would be subject to a fierce gaze, and her bark. It was plain to see that she had bite to back it up, irregardless of the rifle next to her.

Mikhail Litinovo was a student. He had the look of one; intelligent, curious eyes, pursed lips to listen, and hands open and ready to gesture, guess, and grasp at the world. It was much easier to imagine him in a library reading philosophy than here fighting over it. Dark haired, thin, and small, he almost succeeded in blending into the wall; the only thing he could have been trying to do, flattened against it like that.

The oldest of the three was Yuri Ivanov. From the way he looked perfectly at ease with his surroundings, leaning casually against the wall while taking his gun apart and putting it back together again with a smile both grim and coolly satisfied, Ivan guessed he'd already served before, perhaps at the end of the 1910's.

An awkward silence- not that there had been conversation before- fell over the mostly empty room as the others took note of Ivan. Mikhail tried to sink further into the wall, Anya held her head still higher and Yuri

_"привет_," Ivan said, with a tiny wave, feeling suddenly shy.

The greeting fell flat, as nobody returned it. "Another citizen?" Yuri Ivanov said in a tone void of contempt, but tinged with disappointment and irritation. Anya turned her glare on him.

"Maybe," Ivan said flatly, trying not to show that the assumption stung a little. He wasn't wearing a uniform, he liked his overcoat too much for that, but that didn't necessarily mean anything, did it? "Maybe not." This seemed to throw the man off balance, but he soon recovered a smile cooler still. He tossed Ivan an Tokarev SVT-40, who caught it, careful to avoid putting his hands near the trigger yet.

"Then I suppose you'll be the one who knows what we're doing here." Ivan nodded, but had to be prompted again before it occurred to him to say anything. "Well?"

"There's a block of offices in Novaja that are being used to stockpile ammunition. We're to go and make sure that isn't the case anymore." Ivan was perfectly aware that that would be difficult, and if he acknowledged that fact, there would be no denying it for any but the most naive and blindly optimistic of children.

"That's in German-held territory," Mikhail whispered to himself.

"Yes," Ivan said, which nearly gave the poor boy a heart attack. He pulled further back into the wall, face red at having been caught saying anything.

"We will probably die." These were the first words Ivan heard Anya Urbanova say aloud.

Yuri Ivanov shrugged, filling his pockets with rounds for his PPSh. "We die if we go, we die if we don't..." He slung the rifle over his shoulder. "Between a German bullet and a Russian one, I'll take the German one. Hurts less."

The rest of the squad, or perhaps just Ivan and Mikhail, were left to wonder whether he meant that in terms of loyalty to his country, or literally. If anyone decided to say anything to an authority, it would most definitely be the second one.

"So, Ivan. Do you like making enemies, then?"

Ivan cocked his head, while Mikhail's shot up in surprise. "What makes you think that?"

Anya scoffed. "Why else would they waste someone who knows how to handle a gun? I don't think you've been here long- you'd look a lot worse if you had. So you've either pissed someone off-" She shrugged, holstering her pistol. "Or you've done something impressively stupid."

"Actually, I think I'm the enemy, most of the time," Ivan said softly, looking at the ceiling as if he was expecting to see sky. Last he'd seen, clouds were beginning to congregate in a wake over the wrecked city. It was cold enough; maybe snow could wash away some of the ugly gashes Stalingrad had ripped into it.

Anya Urbanova hummed disinterestedly. She took a look around the corner. "We're clear." She ushered everyone around the bend before taking a position as the rear guard.

"Mishka, you're about to step in-" Anya started, before being cut off by a disgusted cry from Mikhail. He recoiled, pressing himself against the curved wall of the tunnel, foot out in front of him as if he'd been frozen after kicking a ball. Everyone froze as the noise echoed, bounced out in front and to their rear, announcing their presence.

Nothing happened, and the group breathed a collective sigh. "Oh, _ew_," Mikhail whispered. He couldn't seem to stop himself from staring at the mess of sludge on his boot.

Ivan couldn't wait to get out of the sewers.

They would have come out two blocks away from their goal, but finding that one blocked by some unidentifiable weight over the exit's cover, they would have to travel another two. Mikhail, made bold by the irrefutability of his collected facts, commented that this made their objective more dangerous.

"Well, we have the better chance, don't we?" Ivan said sweetly. Mikhail stared at the blond, baffled at how one could have the better chance when they were outgunned, outmanned, and held (quite literally) the lower ground. "They don't know we're coming."

"Tactician of the year," Anya said, deadpan. Ivan stared at her, not catching the sarcasm, and Anya couldn't keep her expression blank, letting muffled laughter spill out from behind her hand. Ivan thought she looked nicer when she didn't try and seem so angry.

"You're out of your mind," Yuri Ivanov muttered under his breath, uncontemptously. He began to climb the ladder towards the surface. Mikhail almost smiled a little, ever-watchful gaze floating over his companions, then, more urgently, their surroundings.

They went, running from window to shattered window, wall to crumbling wall, skirting around chunks of collapsed ceiling on the fourth, and highest, floor of the building. They were damn lucky it was still standing, though, and Ivan would take that any day. The big windows and generally large gaps between areas of standing walls were somewhat of a liability, but it was easy enough to disorient the Germans on the ground by shooting randomly into their number. Ivan took careful aim, then pulled the trigger. A soldier on the ground (two meters to the left of where he'd been trying for) crumpled like a rag doll with his strings cut. The man standing next to him bolted for cover with a curse. It must have been the snow in his eye, because Ivan saw white hair.

The ammunition pile, neat and orderly, was in the front lot of the office building. Nobody had any ideas on how to get rid of it without getting deathly close.

Ivan flattened himself against the ground as a bullet cracked past. Wide, but one couldn't take chances. Mikhail raised his head to better see, and Ivan pushed it back down without thinking. "You'll get shot doing that, _da?" _he said.

While Yuri was handing Anya a clip for her rifle, and Ivan and Mikhail were in the process of ducking from the relative protection of one broken wall to another, something clattered onto their floor, much like the sound of a few high-heeled shoes traversing the tiles at once. It wasn't very loud, but it was out of place, which made it noticeable.

"Grenade!" Yuri dropped the clip and sprinted for the nearest cover: around the corner of the hallway. There was no ceiling, but for their purposes, walls worked just as well with or without those. Everyone else followed suit.

"Mishka!" Anya screamed over her shoulder. "Move!"

Mikhail didn't move. He stood, frozen, eyes wide as saucers in the face of the bomb. Ivan realized that he would die if he continued to do that. He didn't want Mikhail to die. Mikhail was nice, he was a friend, and he still had that same sort of quiet, wide-eyed idealism that reminded Ivan of someone he couldn't quite remember, but knew he'd loved.

He dropped his gun on the ground and made an impressive 180 degree turn in near mid-stride. Reaching Mikhail, he made another about-face that would have made any drill sergeant cry with joy, and barreled straight into him, wrapping his arms around Mikhail and sending them both to the floor.

Ivan imagined for a moment it might have cracked under the impact.

He let his momentum roll them further away from the grenade, all the while keeping an iron grip on the young man, until they came to a stop.

Ivan heard, but did not feel the explosive detonate. As they came to a stop, he opened his eyes, waited for the world to go red, then white, then black. He waited for blood to flow out of him until his heart couldn't take the strain anymore and stopped. He waited for the familiar sting of death, but it didn't come.

Snowflakes floated down in whispers, alighting on every surface with a sigh.

"You're okay." It was spoken to nobody and everybody. Ivan sat Mikhail up much as one would a doll and turned to survey the damage done by the tiny bomb.

By some miracle, the grenade had not gone off, though Ivan would have sworn he'd heard it. It was lodged under a desk, dark green standing out against the stained white tiling. By some other miracle, or the same, Ivan and Mikhail came out with some scrapes and cuts, the latter of the two shocked and shaking, but alive.

"_Iesu Cristi," _Anya said, peeking out from her corner. She wasn't supposed to say things like that. Religious things. "That thing dead?"

Then Ivan got a funny idea.

He got up and approached the thing carefully. As if movement set it off, not a tiny fuse that didn't give a damn about time.

"Ivan, what-"

"Don't get near that!"

"Motherfu-"

The grenade was warm and round in his hands. It was also live, because the pin wasn't in its place. How it hadn't exploded, Ivan didn't know. He didn't much care, as long as it meant he was okay. His hand tightened around it, as if in a final embrace before sending a loved one off.

And he threw it as hard as he could towards the neat, orderly pile of guns and bullets, across the concrete, dead plants, and fallen snow littering the office's front.

There was a terrific explosion after that, one that left Ivan's ears ringing. He didn't get down in time, and even from the fourth floor, the heat was almost unbearable. The part of his face not shielded by his collar and scarf burned. The building shook, and for a second, he was afraid it might fall. But even as it swayed drunkenly, the foundations held.

The outer part of the building was completely destroyed. Fires burned like tiny suns around the yard. Some of them moved, and Ivan thought he was still disoriented enough to be seeing double until he realized those were people on fire. Anya muttered, "Oh my God," next to him.

Mikhail wouldn't get up to look, no matter how hard anyone pulled at him. He remained curled on the ground, arms over his head.

Yuri Ivanov took shelter behind a section of bricks not totally destroyed and began firing again, face set in grim determination. Ivan followed suit. They'd started, but they weren't finished yet.

Slowly, Anya did the same, and after a very long time, Mikhail joined them, shadowing Anya and Ivan, his big, observant eyes darting this way and that, watching the chaos below.

Yuri announced at some point that he had three reloads left, so everyone should be very precise with their firing.

At that moment, it seemed Anya had had enough. "Let's get out of here," she said sourly. Ivan almost disagreed. They were winning, couldn't she see that? If they stayed, they could finish off all of the enemy soldiers that were trying to hurt them! Not to mention, their job had been to clear out the depot. They'd started that by blowing up the munitions storage, but they weren't done until it was empty.

"_Da,"_ Mikhail agreed with a grimace. "This isn't fair." He propped his rifle against the floor, looking down at the enemy troops with pity in his young eyes.

Another gunshot tore through their silence, startling them all. Yuri reloaded his rifle. "I don't agree."

"What?"

Yuri turned to face a confused Mikhail, face blank and empty. "I. Don't. Agree," he said, enunciating every word as if he were talking to a child. Mikhail drew back in the face of his larger comrade, looking indignant.

"Well why not?"

"_First_ of all, the rule is you kill the other guy before he kills you." Yuri took a shot into the courtyard. Ivan noticed that he hit his mark. "_Second. _We are not done our job here. We are not allowed to go back until we've finished." Another shot. He missed. "_Third_-" Sounding more agitated than anyone had yet heard him, Yuri reloaded and fired again. "The Krauts aren't about to let us just _leave_."

"But you can't deny that this is just-" Mikhail searched for the right word with his eyes and hands.

"Cruel," Anya said for him, still glaring down at the scene below.

"Yes! Come on, you have to think that-"

"Well it doesn't very much matter what I think, does it?! We have a job! We do it, we get out of here, and we go on with our miserable lives! You can't think here, you understand that? You can't think, you can't feel, you can't pity. Or you'll go insane, you hear me?" With the report of a pistol being fired, Yuri Ivanov toppled forwards onto Mikhail, who screamed, thinking he was being attacked.

When he found he was only supporting dead weight, Mikhail calmed, but scrabbled away from Yuri, chest rising and falling rapidly and tears starting to slip down his cheeks. Ivan looked to the window. Yuri had gotten mad, he'd stood up, given away his position, a gun had been fired. Someone had made that shot with a pistol.

Impressive.

Peering over the ledge of the window, Ivan saw that the Germans were beginning to recover. Out in the courtyard, a soldier, probably an officer, had enough courage to stand and direct a few men into the building, following after them. It was strange to watch from up so high. They looked like ants.

"They know where we are," Ivan said, voice sounding empty even to his own ears. He could feel his heart start to beat faster in his chest. Suddenly, he couldn't stop thinking about if it would hurt this time. Anya said something to Mikhail.

"They know where we are," he said again, forcing urgency into his voice despite not feeling anything but hot. Even though the wind blew and snowflakes brushed against Ivan's face, settling on his eyelashes, Ivan felt like he was standing on the sun. It was too hot, he felt sticky and tired and he could feel drops of sweat beading on his face; he had to take his coat off-

Anya cursed, pulling Mikhail to his feet, then offering a hand to Ivan, only to find he had already stood up. "In the event that I won't be able to say anything else," she said very calmly, nodding to the two. "It's been nice knowing you." She took off running for the stairs.

Again, Mikhail Litinovo didn't move when he was told. Ivan grabbed his wrist and toted him along after Anya. They descended the rickety staircase together, and Ivan felt unnaturally calm, one hand curled around Mikhail's and the other clutching his pipe, which he couldn't remember having taken from his coat.

They were down on the second floor before Ivan realized he'd left his SVT-40 two floors overhead.

Anya Urbanova died with a bullet biting into her back, tearing through cloth and flesh and scraping across bone. If that hadn't killed her immediately, the jagged piece of rock that had welcomed her skull to the earth had done the job. Her life had ended, and Ivan could feel it. She was one of the thousands of pinpricks biting at his skin at every second. An itch nature deemed impossible to pacify, or to end.

Mikhail Litinovo did not go down so easily. The first floor and the stairwells were choked with smoke from fires. Mikhail, an asthmatic, found this to be disagreeable. His curious, scientific mind seemed to want to record every sensation of death; its feeling, smell, taste; every minute sensation and tremble of nerve was noted and filed in a database that would soon be destroyed. As his lungs filled with smoke and he coughed, squirmed and tried to breathe, Mikhail was the sole observer of his demise. Ivan had long since let go of his hand and escaped. The unfortunate empiricist died alone, his elusive yet universal data accumulated and expired alongside him.

And then Ivan found himself in the basement of the building, wandering between towers of cabinets, records of transactions long since forgotten, with people long since deceased. The ceiling was getting lower, a blanket of smoke inching ever closer to the ground, while chunks of tile, stone, and timber crumbled overhead, tumbling to the floor. The stairwell may as well have never existed; Ivan couldn't find it. Fire was beginning to eat at the supports in the walls of this building, which were still old, and still wood.

Ivan leaned against a row of cabinets, warm from the heat of the ever-increasing fire, and closed his eyes. He focused on breathing. Every gasp of air came in scratchy, clogging his lungs with grit. The scarf was pulled tighter across his nose and mouth to little avail.

He shut his eyes tighter and concentrated on taking steady, even breaths in and out. It got easy after a while. So easy, he didn't even have to think anymore. Ivan didn't have to think about breathing by the end of it.

So he thought about sunflowers, and how soon enough they'd be blooming, how they'd lend their cheerful yellow to the Soviet countryside, a color Ivan didn't see replicated often. The angry yellow of bees and the golden color of honey didn't compare in the slightest. The winter choked the life out of sunflowers. Choked the sunlight out of them.

The cold fact of it was that they did next to nothing. They risked their lives, saw friends, family, strangers die, and for all the tanks blown up, all the centimeters of ground gained, it was next to nothing. A blip in space. Each individual was one cog in a mighty, groaning machine, and if they didn't turn, it would either turn them via their neighbors or expel them as a useless part.

Yet humanity flattered itself into thinking individuals shaped history, not the masses, and not movements. A visionary with his pen, not the throngs who died for him, or a socialite with her ideas, and not the men and women who took them to heart and fought for them, which history tells us was on her behalf. Ideas on their own withered and died. People on their own withered and died.

The American Revolution hadn't happened because a few men in wigs had decided to send a break-up letter to English Parliament. They had been enabled to do that because the citizenry were ready to defend that choice. Hadn't Augustus, the first Roman emperor, taken the mantle because he had support from the senate and his head father's allies? Hadn't he been allowed to rule by winning over the army, the government, and the people? Even Catherine the Great was granted the ability to stage her coup through the shifts of grand movements: the ending of the Seven Years' War, the decline of the house of Holstein, the discomfort of the Russian army in regards to her husband, and the support of the nobility.

But they believed anyway.

And why not? If everyone succumbed to the diminishing reality that they were one thread in the bloody fabric of history, and decided, _'Then who needs me?'_ there would be no tapestry.

Besides, community never did make itself a good subject for drama. In that respect, individuals excel.

Ivan awoke groggily in a guest room in his house after a period of time he learned later was five months. Apparently, he'd been trapped under the rubble of a building, and nobody had found him until certain efforts to rebuild began after the surrender of the Germans.

He couldn't remember having died again and again in those months underground.

Ivan got up with some difficulty (his right arm hurt if he tried to move it and breathing too deeply made him dizzy) and left the empty room. The Baltics' rooms were all empty, neat as if they'd never been there, with the exception of Toris' room. The window was open and snow blew in, gathering in a powdery pile on the floor. Poland wasn't sitting in the parlor reading, nor was anyone in the kitchen, dining room, or library. No one was anywhere, and the house was quiet as the grave.

Wandering, Ivan had partially given up on the idea of finding anyone in his house, though optimistic hope still flickered in its private, perpetual place in his heart. Without realizing where he was, he went into his office, and found it exactly as he left it. Leaving the papers where they were, Ivan turned towards the windows, watching the snow hurl itself against the glass. A turn of a knob, and the radio hummed to life, its bright little bulbs buzzing with lively electricity. Eyes glowing, it sang a symphony for an audience unknown.

The telephone rang.

* * *

_(Archivists' Note)_

_The exact date of this event is not known. No official record presently exists of the particular objective, and information from transcripts of testimony have proved inconclusive. Due to the descriptions of the weather and other setting details, our historians have dated this incident in late September, or perhaps the very early days of October of 1942. _


	4. 16 - 10 - 38

"Francis."

"You know, a _'how are you'_ or _'good morning'_ would be nice, every once in a while, instead of just barking a name into the telephone, _cher_," Francis said. He had no idea what this call could be about, but by Arthur's tone of voice, it couldn't be good. It never was anymore.

When was the last time he'd gotten a call from someone with good news?

Something of a muffled groan came through on the other line. "This is hardly the time, Francis-"

"_Angleterre, _if you don't make time, there never is."

"_Would you just-_" Arthur paused for a second, probably running an exasperated hand through his hair. Francis smiled at the thought. He liked the Brit a lot of ways, but one of the most fun was exasperated. Especially if Francis needed to let off some steam too. "Listen, Chamberlain's got that mad hatter in Germany to calm down- for now."

"Oh?" Francis' eyebrows raised in surprise, and he leaned forward on his elbows, resting his chin in his hands. "And how did you manage that? Not easily, I assume." _Oh please, just talk with me, _he wanted to say. _Can't we just ignore the world for fifteen minutes and just talk, and maybe laugh, or even argue over nothing for the sake of arguing over something that doesn't matter?_

Arthur didn't answer his question, and continued with his earlier sentence as if Francis had never spoken. "But he promised that you all were going to accept the results of a plebiscite in Czechoslovakia. They vote Germany's way, we don't retaliate."

That hit him like a punch to the gut, shattering his mood. "We do _nothing? _They're allies!"

"Francis..." Arthur warned. "Don't start."

"What do you mean, '_don't start?' _Petra and Silas are counting on us-"

"I'm not allied with them, Francis."

"Why are you interfering, then?" Francis demanded, fear churning in his stomach, hot rushes of indignance boiling it into anger, which lashed through the phone at Arthur.

Over in London, Arthur made a noise of disbelief. "Oh, forgive me for trying my best to salvage what I could from a Chancellor who was ready to smash the whole bloody country!"

"Well I-"

"Damn it, and I really thought this was going to take less than ten minutes."

"Really?" Francis snapped. "_Dieu_, Arthur, what did you think I was going to do when you come and tell me that we're abandoning Petra and Silas? Nothing?"

"You're quite good at that, though, aren't you?"

_That_ stung, and Francis thought Arthur knew exactly what buttons he was pressing. He might as well press them right back. "Ha! At least I don't have to meddle in other nations' affairs because _I_ have people that want to see me outside of business!"

"You insufferable prick!" Arthur seethed. He was very obviously angry, but knowing that didn't give Francis any of the cool satisfaction it sometimes did when they were arguing. "Don't go attacking me because I'm cleaning up a mess you got yourself into!"

"What mess?" Francis demanded.

"Oh, the one where you told a tiny country in Germany's backyard you'd help them out if they got into a spat, only to realize you have absolutely nothing material- or in terms of political support, might I add- to back that promise up with!"

"So it doesn't involve you; you shouldn't have interfered-"

"Shouldn't I have? You've been going at it long enough, and have you made any progress? No-"

"It's not your concern, though, is it? It's mine and we are working on-"

"Germany didn't want to _talk_ to you!"

Oh, how Francis knew that was true. Daladier had tried to arrange a meeting between the two nations to try and sort out the whole Austria fiasco, but his efforts had been quickly shot down. It became very clear that Germany was not interested in anything but necessary tense diplomacy with France. Frankly, he didn't want to talk to Germany either. From the very few times he'd seen Ludwig, Francis felt that he wasn't the same as he'd been at the turn of the century, or even in the 20's. He was mechanical, quiet, and did little outside of what his superiors asked him to.

Something had changed, and Francis had every conviction that it had everything to do with who was in charge. Ultra-nationalistic leadership that wanted nothing to do with people they thought had wronged their country twenty years ago.

But why hadn't he been there? Why hadn't he pressed harder for a meeting? He could have done something more, gotten a better deal for Czechoslovakia than England had, instead of just abandoning the siblings. He'd made a promise, hadn't he? That he'd protect them in the event that Germany got hostile.

Now Germany was being aggressive, and Francis was unprepared. Petra expected his help, which he had promised, but if he stepped in, at what cost would that be? He wasn't ready for another bout of armed conflict, not after the Great War. Even two decades later, his beloved country was still in the process of being repaired, and though their frequency had much decreased, a nightmare would come around once in a while to remind him just why he wasn't keen on fighting again.

All of a sudden, Francis felt like he was being strangled. He couldn't breathe right, and for one horrible moment, everything went out of focus. Getting up, he started to make his way towards the window, the balcony, the airs of Paris, but was stopped by the phone's cord going taut, a gentle reminder of things still unfinished and yet unsolved.

Outside, Paris bustled as it always had, carefree and busy. It was back to the life that had imbued it prior to the Great War: shop doors swinging open and closed, music floating from radios out of open windows and cars, people strolling and enjoying the Seine, the gardens, the thousand different things that made Paris Francis' heart, in more than one sense.

Briefly, his attention returned to where he was for long enough to catch Arthur saying something. "-cis. Are you still there?"

It took Francis longer than it should have to locate the source of Arthur's voice; he wasn't in the room, where was he? Ah, the phone held limply in his hand. Right.

Shakily, he raised it to his ear again. The cord wouldn't stretch more, and he had to sit down again, rescuing the base from its precarious position, half over the ledge of the desk. "_Oui_."

Silence from Arthur's end, for so long Francis began to think the line must have cut out.

"Are you-" He stopped, before continuing, more quietly. "Are you okay?"

Was he?

_I'm angry at you for not doing what I needed you to, and Germany for not staying put. I feel like I might throw up and my hands are shaking because I'm so scared about what this might turn into if I do what I feel like I need to, which is refuse to amend my position. I feel like I've let Petra down even though a hundred thousand other things have happened that aren't my fault but don't matter. I feel like I can't do anything, which puts me in a dizzying spiral of helplessness that just goes down and down and I can't breathe or see or speak and I want to be able to do something-_

_And I want you to be here. _

Taking a deep breath, Francis clenched his hands into fists to stop them from shaking and answered, "I'm alright, _cher_. Just… surprised."

There was something on Arthur's end of the line that the receiver half-caught, but it was barely enough to register that it had happened. Francis remained silent, trying to gauge his pulse by counting the number of beats. He must have been miscounting, but _dieu_, it seemed high.

"On the topic of surprise…" Arthur began unsteadily, as if he wasn't quite sure where his voice was going. "Do you know what happened the other day?" Francis' end of the line was silent, so Arthur continued. "I was in a bookstore and about to pay for my things, and along comes this bloke and what must have been a friend of his. Now, they get into this argument in the fantasy section that gets so loud we can hear every word, the cashier and I.

Now, you know I don't enjoy eavesdropping, but this was simply being broadcast, and that's a bloody different case. So the bloke is telling his lady friend that she simply cannot read fantasy; something about it being 'unladylike' and 'too violent.' In any case, she said something I won't repeat, but it made him absolutely livid. He told her that fantasy novels could induce bouts of female hysteria, and too much of the stuff could turn them into vindictive, violent sadists."

She told him- quite coolly- that if it did, he'd be the first person she'd murder, and proceeded to tell him just quite how she'd go about it, then asked if he knew any fantasy novels that might help her to further that particular ambition. I have no idea what his reaction looked like, but he didn't say anything after that."

You'll never guess who it was, though! Stella Gibbons!"

Francis laughed without thinking. It felt wonderful. It didn't matter that he didn't know who on earth Stella Gibbons was, or why Arthur had thought he could tell a funny story (he couldn't, being prone to run off into tangents and generally unaccustomed to even telling jokes, besides sarcastic or sardonic remarks), it just felt absolutely wonderful to hear him sound excited and happy, and the absurdity of the anecdote didn't hurt anything.

If Francis' mind had been a boat being tossed around a dark and mercilessly rough sea, at that moment, some miracle occured, some god held his hand out over the waters, and everything calmed. The sea still rolled, but it was gentler, almost relaxing. Francis jumped at the chance to talk about something mundane, without consequences, to speak without thinking for once.

"_Cher_, that sounds absolutely marvelous," he purred, their earlier argument eagerly forgotten.

"You should have been there; Alfred could not have made more of a scene."

"I would have loved to be." And though that wasn't completely true, there was some element of heartfelt honesty to it.. He didn't have any particular love for the city of London, but certain other aspects of his visits there usually made up for it.

"Liar," Arthur said amiably.

"You would know, Eyebrows," Francis retorted. "You continue to insist on liking that horrid place when I've proved to you that it is impossible for any rational person to enjoy England."

"Is that so?"

Francis shrugged, spinning in his chair, which resulted in the cord tangling around his arm. "I never said I was rational, _mon amour_."

It was a moment before the Englishman processed what Francis had said. "Right, well." Arthur cleared his throat awkwardly, and there was a pause as something rustled near the microphone. "Chamberlain wants you and Deladier and Bonnet to come to London _now_ to figure out what to do."

"Am I dreaming, or are you actually inviting me out?" Francis tried to salvage the relaxed conversation from before with a teasing tone, a fun jab at Arthur, but it felt fake, at least to him. His spirits had come plummeting back to earth as soon as they'd turned to state business again.

At least it seemed like Arthur didn't pick up on the artificial tone. "It's a diplomatic invitation, Frog, and quite an urgent one at that, don't blow it out of proportion." Any other time, Francis might have laughed, but his mind was still racing too quickly and spread too thin over twenty different things that needed his attention to react.

Ludwig and Petra and Germany and Deladier and Arthur and London and Paris and the phone and the sky and sea and_ and and and…_ everything, dim and hazy and gone as soon as it came, melded into one big fuzzy static that engulfed his mind and focus.

"Well, when exactly is _now_, then?" Francis spun his chair to face the desk, tried to find a pen, but nothing would come into focus. On the other line, Arthur said something that didn't quite register. Francis nodded, before he realized Arthur couldn't see him. "Right," he said, not sure what exactly he was affirming.

He traced shadows the latticework of the windows cast onto the surface of the desk absently while Arthur's voice buzzed incomprehensibly in his ear. He couldn't be bothered to listen.

In Francis' mind, he was wandering the streets of Paris, for once with nothing at all to do, the shadow of a person by his side. Passing the _Louvre_ at dusk_, _under the _tour Eiffel_, maybe even sneaking into the cathedral after hours and stealing away up into the bell tower to watch the lights of the city go out, one by one, at dawn. The more hidden gems of Paris were also paid their respects: the old _École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures_, now empty and lonely but still open to instruct those who enter; the _Hôtel Dieu_, nestled in the comfortable shadow of Notre Dame, it's blue door beckoning entry to those brave enough to intrude on its secluded peace; to climb the winding _rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève_ and visit the little patroness of the city, in _Saint-Étienne-du-Mont_ church, overlooked by its flashier neighbors; and the gardens on the _Rue d'Assas_ to visit the little beekeeping school in its 18th century pavilion, tens of artificial hives housing millions of bees, and maybe he and his shadow could stop by the mausoleums in Montmartre-

It registered vaguely that Arthur had stopped speaking.

"Arthur, I-" Francis stopped short. What did he want to say? Everything at once and then nothing at all. There was something that he couldn't put into words, French, English, or otherwise.

"Francis, are you still on?" Arthur asked when he didn't finish his sentence.

"I think so," Francis barely whispered, looking out the window. He could see the midafternoon sun glinting off of the _tour Eiffel_, and hear the unique harmony of Paris' people and art, and he could absolutely feel the cocktail of emotions all vying for his attention: fear, longing, helplessness, hope contrasting despair, a desperate _want_ to do something to fix things, and protect everything close to him from the wanton destruction of another conflict.

"I'll see you in London, then," Arthur prompted, probably in an effort to end the conversation and get back to whatever it was he had to do.

"_Oui_," Francis said absentmindedly. "London." The window was getting closer, and Francis knew it was because he was moving towards it, but couldn't recognize the fact consciously. Sunshine warmed his face as he stepped onto the balcony, and he looked over his city, suddenly intensely in love with it all over again, and wanting nothing more than to protect it with everything he had. Paris, and the rest of France, and Arthur and Gilbert and Marie Helene and Antonio and Lucille and he couldn't _do_ that if they went to pieces over another war again.

"Francis? Have you- you idiot are you listeni-" The phone's cord stretched taut and pulled the base off of the desk, onto the floor. The handset fell from Francis' hand soon after, clattering onto the hardwood as he stepped outside.

Neither end of the call hung up for another 39 minutes, and London's line was the first to end. The phone in Paris was unreachable, that is to say, the phone was not put back in its cradle, for the next 632 minutes, and 17 seconds.


	5. 2 - 11- 40

The thing Francis was unable to get accustomed to was the boredom.

The horrible tone of pea green in the hallway outside of his room, the strange, bland food that appeared seemingly on its own and disappeared in similar fashion, the fact that everyone danced around the open secret that Francis was a prisoner: these would be processed, in time. Even the non-concrete things: different timetables, the constant feeling of being watched, the underlying current of terror and paranoia that buoyed those at the top of the pyramid, with so far to fall... those were things he could adjust to.

What he could not get used to was the _lack_ of things to do. For the past year he'd always been rushing somewhere or another, either with his soldiers or with the prime minister, or simply on his own, trying (and usually failing) to find a place where the war was _not_. The rain was as close as he got, the harder the better. In this respect, Francis would almost rather have been in London, where more often then not it was too horrid outside to see much of anything; the rain drowned out and muffled sound. Francis had sat in the rain until it became too cold to move his fingers. Then, and only then, was the war a little further away. In Berlin, it didn't rain as much, and even if it did, he wouldn't have been able to go outside. Not without permission. Not without the paperwork.

Ludwig was a sight he saw about as often as any comet, though remarkably less bright. Even if he had been around, and even then, willing to talk, Francis tried not to. Something had changed about his demeanor, in the manufactured emptiness in his voice, actions. The natural sense of leadership and proactivity was, if not completely gone, then smothered, and the rigidity with which Ludwig had been carrying himself recently finished what his personality didn't: he was unquestionably unapproachable. But it didn't matter, because Francis wasn't interested in speaking with him.

He would not speak German. But so far removed from home, he was left with no one to speak to at all.

Sometimes he held imaginary conversations in his head with people he forced himself not to invent too deeply. Faceless personalities with ghosts of pasts but explosive presents; who were French, American, Egyptian, even; some who were quietly passionate and others who were everywhere and all at once and nowhere at all. They helped him keep his mind occupied and entertained, but every time Francis paused to keep his imagination in character, there was an empty space that reminded him how alone he was. That there wasn't really anyone there.

"_Francis_."

He turned around and thought he saw Maria Elena, brown curls fallen into her grinning face, her head poked around the doorframe. When she waved him over, he decided that it would be worth it to test the limits of his imagination. He abandoned the book he wasn't reading and dashed across the room, gathering her into an all too real hug. It felt wonderful to see her, to know that _someone_ was alive and in one piece, to feel arms digging into his back and pulling him closer- and _Dieu,_ he had to open his eyes and remind himself that Maria Elena did not have blonde hair, was not as tall as he was, and did not speak French with the _worst _accent imaginable.

Not that he wasn't ecstatic to see Elena. The last time they had been face to face, it had been a rare moment in which she had broken down and cried, hurting and livid at her brother for the war, angry that she had all but lost. It seemed to dawn on Elena, then, that she was small and rather weak compared to the nations surrounding her.

Judging by the cocky, impudent demeanor that had returned, she had receded back into blissful ignorance of that fact.

"Where is your brother?" Francis forced a look down the eyesore of a hallway, expecting to see Antonio come around the corner but finding it empty.

Maria Elena grimaced. "Talking with Ludwig about god knows what," she said bitterly. She began to mutter something to herself in Catalan before stopping abruptly in the middle of her sentence.

"He'll be around soon, I suppose," Francis hummed. Elena shrugged noncommittally. "But how are you, Helene?" Elena shifted from foot to foot, glancing down both ends of the hallway and ignoring his question.

"Helene?"

"_Oui_\- _quoi_-" Elena shook her head, for a second, blank sea green eyes gazed emptily around the hall before she seemed to remember where she was.

With renewed vigor, Elena suddenly took his hand and started walking, pulling him up the ugly carpet, towards the door. "We don't have time for that," she says. "We have to go." Francis began to follow, and the movement felt absurdly foreign. It took him a moment to realize why: he wasn't allowed to just _go_ anymore.

Francis stopped, pulled his hand out of Elena's. "Does Antonio know where you are?" he asked.

"He… thinks he does." Elena stuck her hands in her pockets and avoided his gaze. Bouncing nervously on the balls of her feet, her eyes made quick rounds through the hallway.

"Does anyone know where you are?"

"No," she said after a moment.

"Elena," Francis asked quietly, slowly. He had a suspicion that had been building ever since the disorderly, combative, spontaneous personification of Catalonia had arrived, alone and unaccompanied. It was absolutely thrilling if he was right; Elena would be a godsend if he was right; they were going to get caught if he was right. Francis' heart did tiny somersaults in his chest, both terrified and excited. "Where are we going?"

Elena looked him square in the eye, lifting her chin in her defiant, defensive way. "Away."

At once, Francis felt like collapsing on the floor, and taking his sister's hand and starting to run. Starting to run, and not stopping until he was back in Paris- his city that wouldn't be occupied by Germany when he got back.

But he did neither of those things. Taking a deep breath to clear an airy feeling in his head, Francis said, "Helene, you can't," and then wondered how those words had made it out of his mouth.

"Can't I?" she said, a little too loudly. A door opened around the corner of the hallway. The irrefutable fact dawned that someone would come around it and see them. His heart rate quickened, but Francis couldn't feel it.

How long did they have? A second? Ten? How long was it before the corner would be turned? What would happen to Elena if she was caught, out of line and out of bounds- or to him?

Francis thought fleetingly about the other nations under occupation. Perhaps they had the same razor-thin line to tread, blind and deaf to the rules of the game but players all the same. Perhaps they had fallen off. And that was why Francis hadn't seen any of them.

_You can't kill a nation… _

No, but people could put them through worlds of pain, couldn't they? Something cold settled in his chest as he remembered that no one had seen Poland in nearly a year. Damn it, didn't Elena realize what she was doing? The severity of the consequences? _She doesn't understand, she's too young, too blindly rebellious-_

"This isn't a decision you can make, Helene..." Francis tried desperately to reel in his own fears, the part of him screaming to _just leave, this might be your last chance-_

"Then make it right so I don't have to do it for you," she said lowly, silently daring him to say no.

Francis was the first to look away, breaking eye contact to see a foot coming down around the corner.

Quietly, something broke inside of him. Complacency, terror, common sense: gone, shattered beyond repair.

"_Ándale_, Helene."

The car was a similar shade of green to the hallway, though instead of being reminiscent of semi-digested peas, it was cooler, less washed out and bland. It calmed his nerves a little to think of leaves, of saplings in springtime. Antonio's eyes were brighter; the car's paint matched Arthur's more closely, didn't it? Francis stalled for a precious second to examine it.

Maria Elena practically pushed him into the backseat, tossing him a bundle of clothes without looking as she crashed into the driver's seat, jamming the little vehicle into gear and accelerating much too quickly and far too dangerously, not that it should have mattered much. They were already looking to die; what was the matter with testing the odds a bit more?

"Change," she ordered in French, not wasting concentration to cover her slight accent. "We're going to have to toss what you've got on." Elena glanced at Francis over her shoulder, a move that she shouldn't have attempted, in his opinion, at such a speed. "I figured you wouldn't mind, given the circumstances."

As Francis changed into the new garments, he caught his faint reflection in the window of the car. It could have been wrong, yes, but he had to think his appearance was better than he'd thought it would have been. A glance down at his exposed chest revealed that his ribcage wasn't so prominent as it had been in early 1940. Suddenly, he recalled the sharpness of Elena's cheekbones, the dark circles around her eyes. Last he'd heard, she had been backed into a corner, in Spain's civil war, determined to defend Barcelona, cut off from the rest of Republican Spain, still antagonistic even with her back against a wall and nowhere to go. It was too easy to imagine his sister, instead of choosing to surrender her fight, digging a hole deeper and deeper as she refused to let go of an idea that was failing- had failed- but at least was hers.

He pushed his arm through the coat sleeve. Was he part of that hole?

"You realize this is very illegal? And that you are technically on Ludwig's side, not mine? While I appreciate this, _cher_, I'm not quite sure..." Francis trailed off, doing his best to climb into the passenger seat as the car was moving. It was far from a graceful maneuver, but eventually he got there.

"I play whatever side I _want_," Elena said with a scowl. "I've got territory with you, territory with Toni. And right now," she glanced at him out of the corner of stormy blue-green eyes flashing with anger. "He's got me pissed off."

Francis sat back in his seat, unsure how to feel. It was ironic, almost. He liked to say he was fairly in touch with his emotions. But there were two things that always seemed to throw them off kilter: England and war. Sometimes, they were not mutually exclusive things.

"I guess things have been hard for you since the war ended, _non?_" Francis ventured as the car sped on, not comforted by Elena's tense shoulders, the way her hands strangled the steering wheel. How she had been fuming silently for most of the ride instead of her normal voluble self. "How are you getting on with Franco-"

Elena slammed her fists into the wheel suddenly, causing the car to swerve dangerously. She didn't seem to notice. "_Aquest maleït fill de puta pensa que-"_ With a cry of pain, she clutched at her throat, her speech gone.

As the car skidded to a stop, Elena doubled over, coughing violently. Francis felt panic rising as he tried and failed to find something, anything, to help, gripping at his seat as the car made tight circles, leaving dark skid marks on the road, until as suddenly as the fit had started, it stopped. The car was silent, still.

Elena's head rested against the steering wheel as something breathy that could have almost been a laugh escaped her. "_Dios_," she said in a raspy voice, a pained smile etched into her face.

Stunned, but not surprised, Francis managed a relatively firm, "Helene, what was that?"

"_Dios,"_ was all she said.

"_Marie Helene_." Francis pulled her up, turning her shoulders to face him. "You obviously can't go on if you're like this." Her body trembled with stubbornly repressed tears, and the only face Elena could possibly make to keep from falling to pieces in front of her brother was one of indignant anger,

In a voice that sounded barely solid, she said, "I'm fine." When Francis didn't look convinced, and opened his mouth to say something else he hadn't thought through, she repeated, "I'm fine, Francis. Just- I'm having a little trouble with… certain languages, at the moment." Elena glared into the distance at nothing, voice dripping with ire.

And because Francis was anxious, because the car being still scared him, he let it go. The worry for his sister, for Antonio and the mess they were all in, was drowned in a thousand other thoughts, and a million other questions, as they drove on in silence.

Berlin faded into the distance. Elena kept the car on country roads, stopped every once in a while to take one of the many containers of petrol out of the trunk and refuel the car, before getting back in and starting again. Every time, Francis got out as well. Being alone in the car made him feel paranoid, as if something would find him, take him back to whatever hell he'd just dodged. The open fields probably weren't much in way of protection- in fact, they were probably more dangerous- but Francis had never been much for practicalities. Even dire ones.

After a long while, once they neared the border, Elena said, in French, "Germany didn't do anything to you, did he?" The blunt, straightforward manner of the question threw Francis off guard, but he found that he collected himself more quickly than he would have assumed. On that note, he felt better too; the heavy weight of dread that had sat on his chest for months seemed to be gone and his mind felt clearer, not as fuzzy. He had every inclination that it was because he was so close to home.

Even under occupation, Francis' city shone.

"_Non, _do not worry. I've suffered nothing in Berlin other than extreme boredom- you know how the Germanics are."

If he had been hoping to get a laugh out of Elena, Francis found his efforts coming up short, which had the effect of dampening his mood as well. His thoughts ran to Gilbert, his stupidly witty, arrogant, cynical idealist of a best friend, whom Elena probably took after more than either of her brothers. That had been the only good thing that had come out of the surrender. Francis had seen, and spoke with Gilbert a total of four times. Granted, all of them were rushed and fleeting and secret, and since October, he hadn't heard from him... But it was so much better than nothing.

He had gotten up the courage to ask Germany where his brother had gone a few weeks prior. The blond had turned to Francis, something warm and raw flickering across his face before being smothered under the weight of his stony exterior. _"He is in Russia, serving with other-"_ Germany had paused, the peculiar expression surfacing again. _"Turncoats."_

Perhaps he hadn't been able to use the word that was on the official papers. Traitor.

"But," he continued, in an effort to lift his spirits more than Elena's, which, when she was in a mood, was usually stuck until she decided to change it. "I will tell you, it was rather fascinating to see how they're running things. I don't suppose I was anywhere near the main concentration of commanders- worry about stealing secrets, I suppose, which is rather unfounded- but it's all so _organized_. Everything runs on the millisecond, _Helene_, I don't know how they manage it! It's absolutely _awful_, no spontaneity, no-"

Elena let out a quick, low "_Merde,"_ cutting Francis off. He got the feeling she hadn't been listening as he looked at her, then forward, following her gaze.

Up ahead, a checkpoint blocked the road. Three _Wehrmacht_ soldiers stood around it, two in the doorway of the little hut beside it, one in the road with a rifle. Elena gritted her teeth as she slowed to a stop, Francis tried his best to stare straight forward with a neutral face. That was a trick he'd learned during his stay in Germany; look inconspicuous and you had a chance.

One of the soldiers got a look at the car, said something to the other, who went inside the hut to check something. Francis thought he saw him reach for a phone. A rising swell of panic began to overtake Francis. They had no papers, there were at least twenty containers of fuel in the back of the car, which did _nothing_ to help whatever story they were going to come up with, he couldn't remember if they had gotten rid of his old clothes, _Elena_, who got into fights like she had a quota to meet, was driving- oh, _Dieu_, why hadn't either of them thought this through-

"When this Kraut comes, I'm deaf, and you _don't_ speak French," Elena said tersely, looking like she would much rather do anything other than keep her mouth shut.

Francis was in the middle of an incredulous _"What?"_ when the soldier tapped on the driver's side window and Elena rolled it down with a perfect mask of obedience.

It looked like Francis would speak German after all.


End file.
